Exploring the History, Literature, and Culture of the Tar Heel State

New in the collection: cotton gin ‘fire tag’

After cotton was picked and baled, it was stored at the local gin and tagged with an identifying number linking it to the farmer who owned it. Cotton is highly flammable, so the metal tags were especially important in the event of fire. These “fire tags” had mostly given way to other means of identification by the end of the 20th century.